DENVER — The significance of Women's History Month settled in on Becky Hammon, as she took the stage of a series called "Bold Women Change History," at the History Colorado Center. Hammon isn't changing history, she said, without history first allowing her and other female athletes to do so.
"Obviously without Title IX, neither of us are sitting here, I'm definitely not sitting here," she said. "My whole career, my whole life has been dedicated to these opportunities that TItle IX provides and so for me, it's a little bit of a snowball effect, in the sense that like, without TItle IX, I never get the opportunity to play in college probably, professionally, I never get that, and then if I never play professional ball, maybe the NBA and Gregg Popovich never get an opportunity to see me as a professional athlete."
Hammon was a true trailblazer in the NBA, becoming the first female coach in the NBA, first as an assistant under Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs, and then as the first head coach when Popovich was ejected from a game. She never tires of the word.
"It's a mantle that I have a lot of respect for, I handle I think with appropriate caution and care, because I know the weight of it and how many people came before me for us to even be having this conversation," she said. "We were just trying to figure it out a lot of the times. There were things that came up that I didn't even see coming up and there were things that were like, 'this is wrong, we need to fix this.'"
Her next opportunity to make history came knocking. She turned down an opportunity to seek a head coaching role in the NBA and turned to the "W," becoming the first rookie head coach to win a WNBA title this past summer with the Las Vegas Aces.
"WNBA is never a step back for me, it's a step forward, it's a different direction, it's never a step back, and I never looked at it like that," she said. "This was an opportunity that I felt, that I was ready for. Quite frankly, I don't need validation from any NBA executive to say I'm a good coach. I really don't and I'm over it."
Instead, she's becoming the hero she rarely had growing up. As a kid, Hammon had posters of Michael Jordan on her walls, only eventually discovering Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and the rest of the 1996 Olympic team.
"I think that again, that's why it's so powerful to have women athletes because this is somebody that looks like you, has the same height as you, the same ... you know, to see somebody else do it is so powerfully impactful for the next generation."
And as Hammon says, the next generation keeps getting bigger, faster, and stronger. While she can't wait to see who she'll be rooting for in the future, she's continuously celebrating the past.
"There's so many different things and factors that can go into greatness and I feel like, why can't they all just be great? Because they are," Hammon said. "Just let great be great."